Archives for March, 2006

Jordon…

This is Wendy .  Jordon has the nastiest flu I have ever seen him have.  Fever, nausea, cold sweats, headaches, and is dizzy.  He walked home yesterday from work and didn’t have any keys.  I was out and the house with the cell phone turned right down and the house was locked up and like I said, Jordon was keyless (normally Lee or I are home when he gets home from work so he rarely worries about carrying a set. 

Now Jordon has hidden keys around the house in the past but someone (me) has a habit of forgetting keys and taking them and never putting them back.  Jordon could have broken in but it isn’t that easy in the summer and with our yard being really sloppy, it was going to be even harder.  He was so tired, he made himself comfortable on the deck and despite it just being above freezing, slept in a lawn chair for an hour.  I got home and Jordon slept for about another 6 hours.  Woke up for 20 minutes, slept for another 13 straight hours.  He tried to get going for work today and decided that maybe heading to the doctor would be a better plan as he is even sicker today.  He can keep down liquids and medication so it isn’t as bad as it could be but he won’t be back online at all until Monday.

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03/31/2006 | Uncategorized | 6 Comments

Ugh

I think a bus hit this week as I feel sicker than anything.  No blogging or returned e-mail for a while.

03/30/2006 | Uncategorized | No Comments

Random thoughts

  • Some of you have asked me how my health has been.  Two words.  Autonomic Neuropathy.  It hurts badly both internally and externally now.
  • Ergo keyboards are hard to get used to.  You soon discover your bad typing techniques.
  • I am now running Windows 2000 on my notebook.  I miss the old Windows 98 interface.  I am glad to have it back again.
  • My review of Reallivepreacher.com is online at TheOoze.
  • Maggi has been stalking my every move tonight in a desperate attempt for me to help her find her ball that she lost.
  • Ricky Henderson thinks he can play.  I have never enjoyed watching a player play like when I watched Henderson… or listened to him.

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03/28/2006 | Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Malcolm Gladwell’s review of Collapse

This is from Malcolm Gladwell’s review of Collapse

“Every archaeologist who comes to excavate in Greenland . . . starts out with his or her own idea about where all those missing fish bones might be hiding,” he writes. “Could the Norse have strictly confined their munching on fish to within a few feet of the shoreline, at sites now underwater because of land subsidence? Could they have faithfully saved all their fish bones for fertilizer, fuel, or feeding to cows?” It seems unlikely. There are no fish bones in Norse archeological remains, Diamond concludes, for the simple reason that the Norse didn’t eat fish. For one reason or another, they had a cultural taboo against it.

Given the difficulty that the Norse had in putting food on the table, this was insane. Eating fish would have substantially reduced the ecological demands of the Norse settlements. The Norse would have needed fewer livestock and less pastureland. Fishing is not nearly as labor-intensive as raising cattle or hunting caribou, so eating fish would have freed time and energy for other activities. It would have diversified their diet.

Why did the Norse choose not to eat fish? Because they weren’t thinking about their biological survival. They were thinking about their cultural survival. Food taboos are one of the idiosyncrasies that define a community. Not eating fish served the same function as building lavish churches, and doggedly replicating the untenable agricultural practices of their land of origin. It was part of what it meant to be Norse, and if you are going to establish a community in a harsh and forbidding environment all those little idiosyncrasies which define and cement a culture are of paramount importance. “The Norse were undone by the same social glue that had enabled them to master Greenland’s difficulties,” Diamond writes. “The values to which people cling most stubbornly under inappropriate conditions are those values that were previously the source of their greatest triumphs over adversity.” He goes on:

To us in our secular modern society, the predicament in which the Greenlanders found themselves is difficult to fathom. To them, however, concerned with their social survival as much as their biological survival, it was out of the question to invest less in churches, to imitate or intermarry with the Inuit, and thereby to face an eternity in Hell just in order to survive another winter on Earth.

Free to talk about this among yourselves. 

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03/28/2006 | Books & Reviews, environment | 1 Comment

Stumbling Toward Faith

Renee Alston just let me know that her excellent book, Stumbling Toward Faith is now for sale off her own weblog.  You can pay for it via snail mail or Pay Pal.  She has a limited amount remaining so if you would like to get a copy, time is running out.
 
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03/28/2006 | Uncategorized | No Comments

In conversation with Stephen Shields…

Today I am interviewing the Stephen Shields, creator the Faith Maps online community and one of my favorite bloggers.  Stephen is also one of the best online hosts I have ever seen.  He managed to deal with the high volume of mail that Faith Maps generates as well as the very diverse theological world views.  My time there taught me a lot about both theology and also community.  We did this interview via e-mail back in January and I have been too busy to post it until now.  Enjoy.

What’s your age and occupation.

I’m 45 and I’m USA TODAY’s National Home Delivery Circulation Manager. 

How long have you lived in the Washington area and how did you end up there?

I went to college and seminary to become a professor of theology and/or NT Greek.  I wanted to help prepare Christian leaders for Christ’s church.  Half-way through my Masters degree, I came to the conclusion that seminaries (at least my seminary) were not training leaders but were creating scholars.  (A big clue was when one of my professors said, “We don’t train you how to be pastors but how to answer Bible question.”)  I had nothing against scholarship but came to the conclusion that scholarship was insufficient to create spiritual leaders.  And so I no longer had a planned vocation!  I almost dropped out of school but decided to finish my degree and did so in 1986. 

After I graduated, I felt that I was too young to pastor, loved the church community of which I was a part, and so just decided to hang around there and teach in the church.  But I needed to support myself so I took a job as a spot welder in a local metal fabrication factory!  I did that for about 18 months when suddenly one day I asked myself, “Why are you spot welding in the rural Mid-West??”

At that point, I began a search for a growing church that needed teachers (that’s how I self-identified then) in a metropolitan area.  I had spent some time with Bruce McNicol (Ascent of a Leader) and asked him to tell me of the best churches he knew of that fit those criteria.  He recommended churches in Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington, DC.  One of the churches he mentioned was called Community Church and was pastored by a young former English professor named Brian McLaren.  I wrote letters to all the churches - letting them know that I wasn’t looking for a job but just wanted to volunteer - and visited some of those that wrote back.  In the summer of 1988 I visited what was just being named Cedar Ridge Community Church and liked what I saw.  I sold my home, and moved to rent a room with Brian’s parents in the Washington, DC area in August of 1988 with no job and no friends!

Faith Maps was one of the first online communities dealing with the emerging church.  What was your inspiration for creating Faith Maps? 

Sometime in 1999, I think, I came on staff at Cedar Ridge after many years of lay leadership and involvement.  I worked with CRCC’s small groups, adult education, and sat on the church’s Executive Team.  I had for many years taught a course on basic theology and after I came on staff I relaunched that course calling it “faithmaps.”  I purchased the faithmaps.org domain to develop it for that course. 

But I took on too much:

I was working part-time for Cedar Ridge having the time of my life (really) but putting in 20-40 hours a week;

I was still working full-time for USA TODAY at that time as a Database Administrator/Analyst;
I had been diagnosed with Type II Diabetes in 1996.
Beth and I were parents of three little girls.
And as a result of this too much, I ended up losing control of my blood sugar and getting pretty sick.  So I had to quit CRCC staff. 

It took me a while to recover.  During that time, I purchased faithmaps.org from Cedar Ridge and began to develop it (it’s also, by the way, about to be relaunched with a new design).  At the same time, I also started the online faithmaps discussion group.  Doing both of these things helped me to think through my own thoughts and feelings about what’s now called the emerging church conversations.  It was very therapeutic and rich.

Were you surprised at how fast it grew?

As far as its growth went, I think that thing that was most surprising to me was the degree of intimacy that developed between some of the core members of that group, most of whom to this day I still haven’t met.  We ended up drawing all kinds of folks.  We talked to atheists; we talked to polygamists; we talked to very conservative folks; we talked to folks who weren’t conservative; we talked to people who were intensely hurting and had no one else to talk to; and - perhaps mostly - we talked to folks who were very interested in the nexus of the church and postmodernity (it wasn’t called the emerging church at that time)

You have been involved in a lot of online community innovations at Faith Maps (I think of your excellent Faith Stories small groups).  What has been some of your favorite experiences as a part of the Faith Maps community? 

Well we did have one fascinating experience with a dear woman in Europe who had (I’m not kidding) fallen and broken her hip, who could not reach the telephone, but could reach her keyboard.  She posted a note to the group and we desperately located a hospital near her and arranged for her to get rescued!  She did have to go to hospital but eventually recovered. 

But what I mostly think of are the wonderful people that I’ve met in the faithmaps community.  One of my very best friends in the world came into the group very mad at God and the church.  Early in the group we were joined by a professional philosopher named Jon Gold and he helped us think through this intersection of postmodernism and Christianity.  He also had a passionate love for God and for the Bible.  (We were rocked a couple of years ago when he tragically died of a heart attack).  And there have been so many other really precious people who have joined our community through the years. 

Right now our group is at a crossroads and will probably be taking a new direction when the new site is launched.  We’ve been through a lot of changes in the last 4 years. 

How many e-mail do you read a day?

A lot less than I used to.  :)    A couple of years ago, I realized I was spending too much time online and dramatically cut my time in front of my box.  So I would say that today I probably only read 20-30 emails a day (excluding work emails of course).  It used to be tons more!

What has been best three books you have read in the last year and what has made them worthwhile?

Jordon, I read a lot less books than you do!   :)  Here’s the first three that come to mind - I’m sure I’m missing some more important tome!

  1. Learned Optimism by Martin Seligman.  I loved this book and found it to be very helpful.  I posted a summary of Dr. Seligman’s thoughts on optimism and found a lot of resonance for my faith.
  2. Da Vinci Code - by Dan Brown.  I went into the book girding up my scholarly loins .  But Brown’s historical revisionism really did seem to be pretty far-fetched and it ended up being a very enjoyable novel!
  3. DisneyWar by James Stewart.  Similar to my approach to Da Vinci, I went into journalist Stewart’s book on Michael Eisner and the inner workings of Disney with the intention of learning about organizations.  Though very well written, I ended up mostly enjoying the soap opera!

A couple of decades from now, when we look back at this time of new thoughts and emerging forms of church, what do you think our regrets will be? What do you think we are still getting wrong?

We will regret missing the magnificence of God Himself and his Son Jesus.  We will regret not having prayed more, not having cultivated our personal and communal relationships with God.  We will be sad that we talked and read and learned more than we could possibly ever do.  We will regret getting lost in the issues rather than getting lost in Him.  We will believe that we spent too much time in the propositional and not enough time in the transpropositional.

You are a known learner.  If you could spend a year learning from any theologian in church history, who would you choose to learn from.

Augustine

What are your five favorite weblogs?

  1. Andrew Jones
  2. Ted Olsen
  3. jordon cooper (no, i’m not just saying that!)
  4. scot mcknight (though I can’t possibly keep up with his frenetic mind!)
  5. jason clark

This is for my Canadian readers.  You live in the Washington area.  Without looking this up, do you know of the top of your head who Alexander Ovechkin is?

I’m afraid I don’t

Somewhere in New York, NHL Gary Bettman is stifling a cry right now…

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03/28/2006 | blogging, interviews, theology | 3 Comments

Bad news in the Big Easy

Bell South has almost convinced the Louisiana legislature to shut down New Orleans free wifi network.

After Katrina ravaged the Big Easy six months ago, Greg Meffert, the city’s chief information officer, got downtown businesses back online by opening the city’s wireless mesh network—originally deployed to link surveillance cameras—to anyone who needed it. For free.

“Now it is the lifeblood for so many businesses,” Mr. Meffert told Red Herring. With Internet service still down in more than half the city, he estimates more than 15,000 people use the city’s 512 kbps (kilobits per second) network.

The city now has a daytime population of about a quarter-million, but about a third of the city is still without even basic phone service. The population is expected to swell this summer as more storm refugees return when the school year ends.

The reason why this is a bad thing

Now telecommunication lobbyists are trying to shut down the network, and Mr. Meffert says it looks like the state legislature will agree. State law prohibits cities from providing more than a relatively sluggish 128-kbps network, but New Orleans offered its faster network as an emergency relief effort.

“The vendors, the BellSouths of this world, are not only going to force us back, making our existing Wi-Fi illegal, but also they want to close a loophole for emergencies so that we would not do this again,” said Mr. Meffert.

BellSouth declined to comment. But telecommunications and cable giants have tried to restrict city-sponsored broadband initiatives in other parts of the United States. Several states bar local governments from competing with private telecommunications services.

via

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03/28/2006 | Uncategorized | No Comments

Contextless Links

  • Rethinking tech publishing :: It seems that the industry standard is something akin to 10% of the profits (which easily take 4-5-6 months to arrive), being forced to write in Word, and finally a production cycle that’s at least a good 3 months from final book to delivery. That’s horrible!  And what do you get in return? Usually not all that much. There’s rarely a big marketing push to be had and you’re expected to do lots of the editing yourself. So you get some editing, a cover/layout, and the distribution done for you. Is that worth 90% of the profits and the torture of writing a book in Word and then bouncing versioned documents back and forth? via
  • My Kards :: A cool flickr powered slideshow tool.  Jonny Baker has a show up here.
  • 15 best skylines in the world
  • Mark Driscoll apologizes to Doug Pagitt and Brian McLaren :: Nice. via

03/28/2006 | Contextless Links, photography | No Comments

The Holiness Manifesto

A collection of Wesleyan and holiness movement theologians have published a Holiness Manifesto.  Excellent reading.  There is also an interview with it’s chairperson, Kevin Mannoia

The Holiness Manifesto says that “holy people are not legalistic or judgmental. They do not pursue an exclusive private state of being better than others. Holiness is not flawlessness but the fulfillment of God’s intention for us.” Can you unpack that for us?
That is our effort to acknowledge the “valley moments” in our own histories. We recognize, for example, that in the mid-20th century a lot of what we did was based out of a legalism that was behaviorally oriented and in many cases became judgmental.

And we’re trying to say that we all recognize that pitfall. We reject that, and we want to capture the spirit of this message afresh.

The document says that holiness is not “an exclusive private state of being” and frames holiness as neighbor love. It uses “covenant” language. There’s a more communal understanding of holiness in this statement, that holiness is not just about us as individuals but about individuals belonging to a covenant people.
We’re trying to say that we have also fallen prey to the idea of a privatized faith, that you are holy internally and that it has no external responsibility to community and to culture. We recognize that we cannot be holy in our hearts without an overflow of action and engagement with other people and with culture. The important thing here is that holiness begins with God. It does not begin with the church, it does not begin with a person, it does not begin with the Bible. It begins with God.

One characteristic of God is holiness, and at the root of that is his love for humanity. Out of that abundant love then, his otherness, which is essentially his holiness, finds expression in reaching and engaging with humanity for redemptive and reconciling purposes.

So if we pursue becoming Christ-like, which is the essence of holiness, then we will not only be transformed into his holy character, but that love will flow through us and compel us to engage and to transform culture. You can’t have individual holiness without social holiness. It’s impossible.

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03/27/2006 | theology | 8 Comments

In fine form

One of the regrets that I had about the Paul Martin era in Canada is that he never reconciled with the Chretienites and especially with Warren Kinsella.  The reason is that during the last two elections, his attacks were directed towards the Liberal Party and it is hard to hit your own family hard, even when you disagree with them.  Those rules change during leadership campaigns apparently and today I was treated to this link and commentary by Kinsella about Michael Ignatieff.

Now, it is true that I objected to the learned professor before reading this essay, posted over the weekend on Pierre Bourque’s site. I objected to the manner in which his supporters trampled on democracy in a Toronto riding – literally locking out opponents. I objected to his support of George W. Bush’s illegal war in Iraq. I objected to the fact that he mocked Canada during the three decades he was abroad, and that he likened Israeli policy to the fascism of apartheid. I objected to what I perceived to be breathtaking arrogance – calling Canada a “herbivorian boy scout” one day, then jetting up here to run it the next.

And then came this essay. Below I have culled a representative sampling of some the things Ignatieff says about torture in his just-published tour de force. His Kool Aid drinkers – and he has many already, rest assured – will bombard me with emails, braying and screeching that I quoted him out of context. But the fact is that they are his words. And the fact is that, in politics, voters and reporters are not patrician Harvard students, willing to keep quiet until the very end of the great man’s hour-long treatise, or until the end of a 10,000 word essay in the New York Times Magazine. They can be counted upon to object right away to the objectionable. Up here in the frosty herbivorian Boy Scout camp, all that it takes is a few sentences, usually, to permit a glimpse into what passes for a soul. We have that skill, boy scouts that we are.

That said, here’s Michael Ignatieff on torture. If you don’t read them now, you’ll be reading them enough during the next election campaign.

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03/27/2006 | Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Looking for a good blog designer?

If you haven’t checked out the blog designs that Pernell Goodyear is doing lately for the Freeway and the FRWY.ca Cafe, you ought to.  As nice as those are, I think his best design is the one he created for his wife Margie.  Three of the nicest designs I have ever seen using Blogger and blogspot.  I am not sure what Pernell is charging but if you are looking for a great designer…

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03/27/2006 | blogging | No Comments

The ultimate MP3 computer

A while ago I mentioned I wanted to build a computer so that people can DJ at the worship.freehouse.  I wanted it to look good as it would be out in the open an a ivory PC box just isn’t that cool to look at.  Computer Boulevard has some really nice cases but I wasn’t sure if I could afford to shell out $100 for the one I wanted considering I would be giving it away.  The one case I wanted to use is a great looking cube case that a co-worker had.  It was going to cost me $120 and it takes a Micro ATX motherboard.  Not cheap. 

While at work the other day, I was sitting alone in the lunch room (which reminded me of being sent to my room as a kid for some reason) when I got an epiphany of sorts.  I decided to customize and paint a standard ivory box of my own.  I decided on a deep cherry red color for the case.  I went to CO-OP and looked around and they had some fire red paint by Tremclad that I liked.  I have worked with Tremclad before and it is pretty much idiot proof.  I bought a small can of it and went home and put on a thin layer of paint on an old case of mine and it looked really, really good.  I tend to give Tremclad a long time to dry and harden between coats and while it was drying, I realized that it wasn’t an ATX case but an old AT case which was pretty much useless to me, unless of course I wanted to put a 486 together.  It did show me though that it will look good and I am kind of excited about that.  I tracked down an old beige case from work and will hopefully have a somewhat finished product for the weekend.  That being said, I am a little obsessive compulsive about it so it may take longer.

On Sunday I was doing some research at work and I came across this case that was created for CNet by Smooth Creations.  If I am thinking of doing this for a career, I have some stiff competition as this case made some jaws drop at work.  Even the keyboard and mouse are painted to match. Nice.  If that doesn’t impress you, this should.  If there was ever a case that screams, “Don’t go into my cubicle!”, this is it.

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03/27/2006 | Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Quite a flight simulator

Quite a flight simulator

This makes my dual monitor setup look pretty lame.

03/27/2006 | Uncategorized | No Comments

Resonate ECHO with Brian McLaren

Hosts: emergent Canada & Resonate
Guests: Brian McLaren, you

Date: Sat Apr 8th
Time: 7:30pm ’til we get tired
Where: Richview Baptist Church (1548 Kipling Avenue, Etobicoke, ON)
Added draw: fair trade refreshments
Cost: your time, energy, and you may have to fight a winged monkey

This relaxed, informal evening follows a full day of The Evolving Church Conference at Tyndale University. Brian, among others, is speaking at this event but we have enticed him to Richview with the promise of an armchair, good company and even better conversation. Although the format is still … er … liquid, we envision far more relational participation than hardcore lecture.

RSVP to Darryl Dash.

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03/27/2006 | Resonate, theology | 1 Comment

Contextless Links

03/27/2006 | Contextless Links | No Comments

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